The Question of Poe's Narrators Author(s): James W. Gargano Source: College English, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Dec., 1963), pp. 177-181 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/373684 . Accessed: 03/05/2011 11:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ncte. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. National Council of Teachers of English is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to College English. http://www.jstor.org The Question of Poe's Narrators JAMES W. GARGANO PART OF THE widespread critical con- makes no high claims for Poe as stylist, descension toward Edgar Allan Poe's he nevertheless points out that Poe could, short stories undoubtedly stems from and often did, write with lucidity and impatience with what is taken to be his without Gothic mannerisms.5Floyd Sto- "cheap" or embarrassing Gothic style. vall, a long-time and more enthusiastic Finding turgidity, hysteria, and crudely admirer of Poe, has recently paid his poetic overemphasis in Poe's works, critical respects to "the conscious art of many critics refuse to accept him as a Edgar Allan Poe."6 Though he says little really serious writer. Lowell's flashy in- about Poe's style, he seems to me to sug- dictment of Poe as "two-fifths sheer gest that the elements of Poe's stories, fudge"' agrees essentially with Henry style for example, should be analyzed in James's magesterial declaration that an terms of Poe's larger artistic intentions. "enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a Of course, other writers, notably Edward decidedly primitive stage of reflection."2 H. Davidson, have done much to demon- T. S. Eliot seems to be echoing James strate that an intelligible rationale in- when he attributes to Poe "the intellect forms Poe's best work.7 of a before highly gifted young person It goes without saying that Poe, like puberty."3 Discovering in Poe one of the other creative men, is sometimes at the fountainheads of American obscurantism, mercy of his own worst qualities. Yet Ivor Winters condemns the incoherence, the contention that he is fundamentally and of his puerility, histrionics style. a bad or tawdry stylist appears to me to Moreover, Huxley's charge that Poe's be rather facile and sophistical. It is poetry suffers from "vulgarity" of spirit, based, ultimately, on the untenable and has colored the of views critics of Poe's often unanalyzed assumption that Poe prose style.4 and his narrators are identical literary Certainly, Poe has always had his de- twins and that he must be held respon- fenders. One of the most brilliant of sible for all their wild or perfervid utter- modern critics, Allen Tate finds a variety ances; their shrieks and groans are too of styles in Poe's works; although Tate often conceived as emanating from Poe himself. I believe, on the contrary, that 1"A Fable for Critics," The Complete Poetical Poe's narrators possess a character and Works of James Russell Lowell (Cambridge, consciousness distinct from those of their 140. 1896), p. creator. These I am con- 2Henry James, "Charles Baudelaire," French protagonists, Poets and Novelists (London, 1878). vinced, speak their own thoughts and are 3T. S. Eliot, "From Poe to Valery," p. 28. the dupes of their own passions. In short, 'Aldous Huxley, "Vulgarity in Literature," Poe understands them far better than Music at Night and Other Essays (London, can understand themselves. 1949), pp. 297-309. they possibly Professor Gargano of Washington and Jef- 5Allen Tate, "Our Cousin, Mr. Poe," The ferson College is Fulbright lecturer in Ameri- Man of Letters in the Modern World, Meridian can literature at the University of Caen Books, pp. 132-145. (France) 1963-64. He has published mainly 'Floyd Stovall, "The Conscious Art of Edgar on James and Poe; his most recent publications Allan Poe," College English, 24 (March 1963), are on Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" 417-421. in JEGP, April 1963, and Hawthorne's "The 'Davidson, Poe: A CriticalStudy (Cambridge, Artist of the Beautiful" in AL, May 1963. 1957). 177 178 COLLEGE ENGLISH Indeed, he often so designs his tales as while reading Poe, we should cease to to show his narrators' limited compre- feel; but feeling should be "simultaneous" hension of their own problems and states with an analysis carried on with the of mind; the structure of many of Poe's composure and logic of Poe's great stories clearly reveals an ironical and detective, Dupin. For Poe is not merely a comprehensive intelligence critically and Romanticist; he is also a chronicler of artistically ordering events so as to es- the consequences of the Romantic ex- tablish a vision of life and character cesses which lead to psychic disorder, which the narrator's very inadequacies pain, and disintegration. help to "prove." Once Poe's narrative method is under- What I am saying is simply that the stood, the question of Poe's style and total organization or completed form of serious artistry returns in a new guise. a work of art tells more about the au- Clearly, there is often an aesthetic com- thor's sensibility than does the report or patibility between his narrators' hyper- confession of one of its characters. Only trophic language and their psychic the most naive reader, for example, will derangement; surely, the narrator in credit as the "whole truth" what the "Ligeia," whose life is consumed in a narratorsof BarryLyndon, Huckleberry blind rage against his human limitations, Finn, and The Aspern Papers will divulge cannot be expected to consider his di- about themselves and their experiences. lemma in cooly rational prose. The lan- In other words, the "meaning" of a liter- guage of men reaching futilely towards ary work (even when it has no narrator) the ineffable always runs the risk of ap- is to be found in its fully realized form; pearing more flatulent than inspired. In- for only the entire work achieves the deed, in the very breakdown of their resolution of the tensions, heterogeneities, visions into lurid and purple rhetoric, and individual visions which make up Poe's characters enforce the message of the parts. The Romantic apologists for failure that permeates their aspirations Milton's Satan afford a notorious example and actions. The narrator in "Ligeia" his of the fallacy of interpreting a brilliantly blurts out, in attempting to explain integrated poem from the point of view wife's beauty in terms of its "expres- of its most brilliant character. sion": "Ah, words of no meaning!" He anom- The structure of Poe's stories compels rants about "incomprehensible "words that are to con- realization that they are more than the alies," impotent effusions of their narrators' often dis- vey," and his inability to capture the He raves because he can- ordered mentalities. Through the irony "inexpressible." feverish of ex- of his characters' self-betrayal and not explain. His futility cannot be attributed through the development and arrange- pression, however, artistic ment of his dramatic actions, Poe suggests to Poe, who with an "control," and to his readers ideas never entertained by documents the stages of frustration the narrators. Poe intends his readers to fantastic desire which end in the nar- rator's madness. The action keep their powers of analysis and judg- completed comments on the nar- ment ever alert; he does not require or of "Ligeia," then, career of self-delusion and ex- desire complete surrender to the experi- rator's the of ence of the sensations being felt by his onerates Poe from charge lapsing sentimental rodoman- characters. The point of Poe's technique, into self-indulgent, then, is not to enable us to lose ourselves tade. in strange or outrageous emotions, but to In "The Tell-Tale Heart" the cleavage see these emotions and those obsessed by between author and narrator is perfectly them from a rich and thoughtful per- apparent. The sharp exclamations, ner- spective. I do not mean to advocate that, vous questions, and broken sentences THE QUESTION OF POE'S NARRATORS 179 almost too blatantly advertise Poe's narrator'sconfusion and blindness.Wil- conscious intention; the protagonist's son's story is organized in six parts: a painful insistence in "proving" himself rather "over-written" apologia for his sane only serves to intensify the idea of life; a long account of his early student his madness. Once again Poe presides days at Dr. Bransby'sgrammar school, with precision of perception at the psy- where he is initiated into evil and en- chological drama he describes. He makes counters the second Wilson;